Death and Life
by violet-phoenix-rose
Summary: A gigantic game of 'what-if' with death. As in, 'what if she'd died' or 'what if he'd lived'. Current chapter is 'what if Ginny had died during the Final Battle' from an unnamed-till-the-next update perspective.
1. Gone

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: AU-ish project in which I mess with several deaths in a what-if fashion. This one is 'what if Ginny had died' from Luna's perspective. Please review!

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Gone.

Gone, my best friend is gone.

It's tragic, but then again, so is all the other stuff that's happened lately. And it wasn't like any of us could have done something. Not like she could have ducked. Not like death can ever be stopped anyways - except in those weird situations that don't make the least drop of sense, even to people like me, people who get the weird stuff.

The poor Weasley clan.

Two kids lost in as many hours. One killed by an exploding wall (at least that's what little I heard), the other by a woman without a drop of anything good in her. I can't say what's worse, being in the wrong place at the wrong time like whats-his-name, or being frozen in one's last seconds like Ginny. We all miss her already, which is funny because from what I can tell, people didn't ever really have FEELINGS about her. We knew her, we liked her, we talked to her, and that was almost always all we did.

She was always such a good person.

She reached out to me when I saw myself as a lost cause, not worthy or friendship or love or any good thing in the world. She was always like that, befriending the friendless, paying attention to the lost-in-the-shuffle kids, encouraging the depressed... There were so many things she did like that, things that should have brought stronger emotions out of us, things that should have inspired us, and yet we were too weak to react as we should have.

She never even saw her seventeenth birthday.

She was almost exactly three months away from coming of age. We all have things we should have told her, things we should have done for her, stuff like that, but what's going to haunt most of us is all the stuff SHE never did! What I almost know will be the refrain of those thoughts is that at least she had the chance to taste all those things, if not fully experience them. She loved and was loved, fought and was fought for, protected and was protected, stood her ground when it mattered most, and was almost too amazing for her own good.

That's all that remains.

She died at 16 years and 9 months, give or take a handful of days, leaving behind more than she will ever know. A committed boyfriend who regrets leaving her, a family that does not deserve to have lost her, three close friends (I am one of them) who will miss her desperately, numerous schoolmates who may never know how brave she really was, and a lot of people who knew her in passing yet didn't KNOW her. Most of all, she left behind a legacy, something none of the other kids who died managed to do.

I place a white rose and flee the room.


	2. I Loved Her

A/N: This time you must guess the perspective and the person who's dead in your review (cause I feel like doing that and it's pretty obvious anyway). I'll reveal it in my note for the next segment.

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I loved her.

Of course it would take me ages to realize that, and a good length of time to get her after that, and then we had almost no time. Just a month or so before I realized that it would be better for her if we were never anything. There was that moment, back in the end of July, and then I didn't see her for nearly a year. Naturally, she had to die, had to leave us hanging and missing her and all of that.

What if I'd never loved her?

Would that have saved her? Was it my love that got her killed in the end? I'll never know. My only regret when it comes to her is that I didn't realize things sooner, didn't act on feelings - I didn't TRY, that was the problem with what I did! If I'd just admitted it to myself that much sooner, maybe things would've ended so much differently, maybe she'd be here in my arms instead of dead.

No one's ever going to know any of this.

They think I'm enough of a basket case already, half-crazy and haunted, and maybe they're right. No need to give them proof of it, at any rate. No need for anyone to see that I'm not crying because she was my best friend's sister, that the reason I'm mourning her is because I cared too much, because I feel responsible for this, because I can't shake the feeling that I could've saved her.

It's not my fault.

In the end, all I see is that she could have listened to me when I told her it would be better for her to have never cared. She didn't, which means too much to me. She knew the risks and didn't give up, which is all I have to remember her by.

I love her.


End file.
